Chris, I'm glad you brought Nanovation to the fore. I was intending to bring this up myself once I had a better understanding of what exactly they intend doing. I've asked around and one of my associates is now in the process of comparing them to others in this still-nascent space.
A few general words might be in order here, and this is only my opinion. What I see happening in this space is this: A few firms are gaining the spotlight which may be turning the heads of an entire industry which was heretofore complacent with the old world model - a model which has been the mainstay of carriers and vendors, alike, serving their needs very well up until now.
Up until now, the proverbial boat hasn't been rocked, and traditional packaging of bandwidth in both physical infrastructure and logical networking protocols has been the accepted norm. IP has reaped handsomely here, not only for its ingenious end point capabilities, but over the larger stretches of WAN, as well, where routers along the way have introduced their own problems, along with their benefits. Opticals portend a change to this, allowing greater flows to take place with less decisions needed to be reached along the way, between two communicating end points.
This also holds true for MANs, CANs and LANs. Witness the rebirth of Ethernet, once again, as the main container ship to haul IP cargo between points of concentration. Every reputable DWDM manufacturer now has the ability to transport both Fast- and Gigabit Ethernet, and I suspect will soon be announcing plans for doing 10 GbE as well. Another case in point is Fibre Channel, which is now being made transportable over greater distances, which have traditionally been the province of WAN-governed circuit-switched architectures, for distributed SANs and remote peripherals sharing.
Suddenly we are seeing deep science enter the scene, with the potential for disrupting the out-year revenue projections of traditionals who have been behind the curve. Consequently, and since they now see an urgency in moving to the next plateau, the legacy carriers and manufacturers are now redoubling their efforts to either acquire or grow their own "one-betters" in order to match what the startups are bringing to the table, and even in those instances where they are only saying what they will bring to the table.
Boohham, Lumenon, Nanovation, LightPath, SilkRoad, Optical Coating Labs, Templex, Blaze, to name just a few who are both component makers and network element vendors, alike, are some of the new names on the street which are turning the heads. In the carrier segment we see MFNX "breaking through" one taboo after another, we see an increasing number of utility companies getting into the game, and the prospect for lambda sales is suddenly real.
How does one disseminate, leverage, and make full use of these lambdas without the implements of optical handling which these companies profess to be producing? One way is to revert back to SONET constructs and other traditional means of packaging and delivery to the last mile, and to the last thousand feet. The other is to move deeper into the photonic realm at all steps along the way, and that's what these outfits are betting on happening.
In the fiber-to-the-whatever scenario, we see startups making inroads in bringing bundled services over fiber to residentials, threatening the incumbents by bringing fiber closer to end users. I think that the writing is on the wall. The coffee is smelling good, and the roses are beginning to blossom... in some privileged areas, already. Shall we have a discussion on the future haves and have nots?
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
